Ooooh, a new Puzzle Quest! And it's a blend of Magic: The Gathering (ie MTG) and Puzzle Quest! Made by D3 (makers of Marvel Puzzle Quest) & Wizards of the Coast! What could go wrong?

This was my thought as I dloaded Magic PQ, somewhat concerned that it might affect my addictive daily playing of Marvel PQ. Well, I now doubt that, despite the fact that I think Magic PQ is a 3-4* game on track to be a 5* game. But Marvel PQ already is a 4* game, IMO.

The Bad:
10 card decks?!? Really? Meh! Plainswalkers get first weak power at Lvl 2, next at Lvl 14?!? Tiles in match-3 game look very similar (esp Blue & Black), esp when a 'support tile' is in play. While art looks great, not much animation here. Lots of cards, but can be hard to know what's going on, and I haven't found a 'recap' / log button to see what opponent's action was. And lastly -- this is an F2P game w/2 currencies, and despite getting both just by playing, clearly the emph is on spending real money for premium currency to buy boosters. (And I won't be spending anything, most likely.)

My Tips/Tricks:
I'm a newb, but I'm a veteran MTG & Marvel PQ player. I will likely update these as I play more.

1 - Spend your currency well. I dropped 50 crystals (premium) to add all Planeswalkers (PW's). Rationale: the game is new, and I can see their costs soon jumping. Also, when new PW's arrive, I'm sure they will also cost. And for deck building, you can't play cards that don't share a color w/your PW. I like Green, but also like 'em all.

2 - Get an early booster or two, but then start saving for the rates. I didn't want all my cards to be 'standard', but my first 2 boosters didn't offere much of anything interesting. Oh well.

3 - UI Tips:
3a - Deck design is on the Planeswalkers menu. And, if you are new to Magic, there's a Quick Update option which has the AI do it all for you. You can also empty your deck and it will autobuild for you. Not bad!
3b - Support Tiles - to distinguish between your Support Tiles & opponent's in play, the counter will be on that player's side. The color is the color of the glow (this took me forever to figure out).

4 - During play, check your hand frequently (ie every round!) & strategically rearrange cards. Also don't forget to use your PW's powers, even if they suck. And don't mana-charge up Support Cards that need creatures w/o 1-2 creatures in play.

I've been elated, like many USA citizens, about the revival of the Star Wars films by a talented organization.

I'm very excited that the new material will bring a revival of amazing sci-fi films with depth, range, scope, and an ability to reflect back on our society in many ways.

But it certainly strikes a strange chord to watch the rebirth of the "Empire vs Rebellion" scenario in 2015 as a 40 something worker who is essentially disenfranchised, currently unable to gain full-time employment (and still collecting unemployment benefits), and barely making things work financially. And we, the bottom class of USA, are supposed to be doing so much better than so much of the rest of the world!

So my point is -- it certainly seems like The Empire has won, and the various Rebellions that exist have next to no power.

I once worked at a very large multinational which had some of the worst management I have ever seen. It was so bad I took a course in management just to discover how wrong they were doing things. Calling this workplace dysfunctional would be an insult to dysfunction.

One of the managers, a Sales Director newly graduated from Stanford MBA program (and definitely the worst manager I have ever had), would say things directly from the MBA program "we want to have transparency" interjected with strange customer service comments like, "publicly positive privately negative" during our sales team meetings.

Then we learned what was happening under his management: hiring & promoting incompetents, taking people's sales commissions and repackaging them as bonuses for senior managers (ie himself), and firing people who disagreed with his view. While he was fired after 2 years of his destruction had battered our team, the horrible decisions he made stayed for many years after.

These bad decisions are too many to list, but I can summarize a few:

Firing the best sales person.

Coming up with arbitrary work (presentations, reports) for people to get evaluated by him.

Learning other people's jobs & then telling them what they would now be changing -- without considering their feedback.

Then there was the sales guy who wws a total moron, but the corp couldnt fire him because they didnt have cause. So they promoted him to our Sales Director (which he remained for 1 year) before firing him for poor sales performance. He was going through a divorce, and he had a guest speaker for our sales team meeting -- his psychotherapist who talked about Buddhism and acceptance! That same sales meeting started with a disgruntled salesman projecting "Office Space" in the room before the start of the meeting. This was the closest to a real-life Dilbert experience I have ever had.

While it was a horrible experience, they did pay very well. It was a great education for me -- that management doesn't mean improvement or efficiency.

I have had excellent managers, for contrast. They were notable for a few strengths:

Advocated for employees to their supervisors (ie protect their reports).

Help remove obstacles from employees' path to success.

Help develop employees.

Listen to their employees and try to understand from their perspective.

Not be domineering or waste their "authority influence" unless absolutely necessary.

Have mastery level experience which others can use as a resource.

Now, onto my latest rant, which vaguely has to do with management:
Why are the ATS (Application Tracking Systems) used by big companies (Taleo, brassring, etc) so awful / horrible / badly made? Its astounding how bad these massive bloatware apps are, plus generally users have to retype & resubmit their data for each job!!

Every time I use a badly designed ATS system, it makes me question the quality of the place I'm applying at -- if they pay millions to have this obstacle between themselves and quality talent, blocking people out unthinkingly, maybe their management sucks too? Or worse, maybe when you get the job you have to waste hours of every day maneuvering horribly designed software (call it obstacleware or bloatware, but this is too soft IMO) foSidenote -- Why are the ATS (Application Tracking Systems) used by big companies (Taleo, brassring, etc) so awful horrible badly made?
Its astounding how bad these massive bloatware apps are, plus generally users have to retype & resubmit their data for each job!!

Every time I use a badly designed ATS system, it makes me question the quality of the place I'm applying at -- if they pay millions to have this obstacle between themselves and quality talent, blocking people out unthinkingly, maybe their management sucks too? Or worse, maybe when you get the job you have to waste hours of every day maneuvering horribly designed software (call it obstacleware or bloatware, but this is too soft IMO) for unnecessary reports or forms.

I worked in a company where they paid millions for an order entry system to replace our email orders. What resulted was a bloated piece of garbage where inputting a sale took hours (used to be minutes with an email) and throttled the effectiveness of a great salesforce.

Ultimately, management decided to manage the bottleneck by hiring 2-3 people per location with the responsibility of inputting sales orders!!! (And that "Sales Data Clerk" job was a horrible nonsensical job!)

I intimately quit my job because I was required to generate activity reports. At first, it was a monthly activity report highlighting what I had done. This seemed reasonable enough. Then it became weekly, which didn't make any sense, but when it became daily and I was supposed to spend the last hour of every day updating this report, I started feeling the side effects of horrible management: unnecessary stress, anger, pressure to document everything I was doing (which was unnecessary), and resentment. The final straw was when a friend who worked in the HQ compiled these reports into a master report for the Senior Director sent me a copy of the final report -- and discovered nothing I'd been reporting ever made it into the big report!! That caused me to have a physical aversion to writing the reports, which I could now clearly see were busywork, and ultimately helped me make the decision to leave my overpayed corporate tech support job.

I sent the following email (below) to Richard D Wolf, my favorite economist on the radio today (I listen to him on KPFA & his Economic Update podcasts). I highly recommend his shows for understanding Global Economics of today.

Dear Richard,

So happy to hear your show (via KPFA or podcasts). I learn a lot.

I question an accepted starting place in economic analyses: does everyone want USA (or global) economies to succeed?

From my perspective, namely working class Jew, it seems that the ultra wealthy are deliberately sabotaging society for their own power.

If everyone is wealthy (or no one is poor), wealthy people can't overrule the law & society with ease as many do now (as shown by crimes, govt manipulation, and profit extraction).

So if the wealthiest, who also may often be CEOs, Directors on Boards, govt legislators, and executives in companies, if these people are actually deliberately OPPOSED to success of poor & middle classes...
Can we make mechanisms to oust these people from their power roles -- but let them keep their excesses of wealth -- to protect society? Are there any mechanisms now that can work?

When Bill Clinton changed policies to fine companies (supposedly to protect innocent workers & shareholders in organization) instead of putting corrupt corporate execs into jail, I felt that our society had been setup to be destroyed.

Heroes Reborn somehow has taken the cheesiest, most painful parts of the old Heroes -- and kept them. But they forgot the comic book lettering (& are now using some god-awful lettering motion graphics which don't reference comics at all - & they suck)!!

The new show's first episode was like a really bad episode in Season 1 of Heroes -- which coincidentally, was what made the show fun: naivete, the silliness of earnest comic fandom, unknown, and a rapidly toggling mix of characters to keep you watching.

East LA - grizzled war hero alcoholic returns home to his Catholic Mexican family, discovering his "do gooder' brother is a masked super hero. Then his brother is killed, prompting the soldier to carry on his legacy.

Teleporter kid - a young kid has a power that he doesnt understand, and also is going thru puberty. Ugh.

Noah Bennett - continuing onwards as the underlying story (which I wish had died back in season 1), Agent Bennett discovers his mind was wiped (by his choice) and is trying to rediscover his past. He leaves his fiance, w/o barely a glance back, & begins a spy-style mission to get to the truth. Somehow the horrible event of 2/16, where Evos tried to 'come out' & were instead killed (by a bomb?), has some secret behind it. He finds this out by catching a 'Truther" stalker.

Critique -- This show's core problem is bad writing. In certain ways, its the same flaw of the first -- overly ambitious story, flat characters, unbelievable scenarios, horrible dialogue. "Claire Bear" and over-used Syler & Peter were enough to make me nauseous by the end of old Heroes.

But I guess that was also the old show's strength as well: overly ambitious story, flat characters, unbelievable scenarios, horrible dialogue. Is this the 'comic book' emulation? No, Marvel has figured it out much better.

Its hard to think back on Heroes & not have regrets at watching all those really campy, bad shows. But Heroes was one of those shows that started so strong with tons of potential -- and the first season felt like a win for comic lovers, while the rest felt like betrayals (like Star Wars, in some ways: 1 great, 2 ok or good (yet flawed), followed years later by 3 atrocious films).

Not sure I will give Heroes Reborn a chance after Episode 1 -- but clearly there are others who will.

You: have a unique ability at writing, passionate about scifi, willing & eager to write, rewrite, and sell co-written feature screenplays to Hollywood. Ideally you are located in Bay Area as well, but not 100% necessary if you kickass & deliver the goods.

I have 3-4 screenplays in various stages, all needing rewrites. I'd like to do something 100% on our own, or I'm willing to share my projects with you for finishing. If we don't finish a draft we can sell, what's the point?

IMO a feature screenplay first draft can be written in 30 days (about 6pgs / day), but a more reasonable goal is 90 days. Making it 100% superpowered & bulletproof requires at least a few rewrites.

My strongest units are Captains. I just maxed Paladins, and have beefed up Elven Archers and Dwarven Iron Helms.
Just figuring out 'super strategies', but some castle waves are brutal & I lose & beat with mercenaries & go back later to get that last crystal. Despite the frustration, I love this mechanic b/c it really highlights my progression when I go back & mop the floor on that level later.

My trick for items:(Reposted from H&C2 Wikia)
with 9-10 crystals minimum, save your game to cloud.

Go to Blacksmith & buy 1-2 items.

If you got a rare (or better) that you want, save game to cloud again (locking in item to your save).

If you didn't get anything exciting, blow the rest of the crystals on items just to see what you get (only for curiosity), then reload your game from cloud.

Suddenly you have all your crystals back, no purchased items, and can do go shopping again.

While this is a classic savegame cheat, after doing it ~20-30x, I got a few Epic items.

Problems:
1 - Romance with Hulk & Black Widow - totally unnecessary, non-cannon material. Hulk character development was missed, Black Widow has self-hatred.
2 - Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver - not well utilized, arbitrary death (which is a Whedon hallmark, unfortunately). Witch seemed to have 3 lines. (I was elated that Quicksilver was Kick Ass -- but then he was unnecessarily killed, which was a crushing blow.)
3 - Hawkeye's secret family - 99% sure this isn't from comics, 100% sure it wasn't EVER necessary. The only reason I'd want this godawful segment, which I didn't, was to see Hawkeye croak. He's an awkward enough hero, but so easy to replace -- get the next schmuck a bow & neat arrows & no powers. Done. (Where's his dumb mask, btw?)
4 - Vision & Ultron - all the joy/villainy of these characters was bypassed. Ultron didn't make much sense, and radically departed from his comic self -- and why did he need to have animated metal lips AND an anatomically incorrect body? Make a metal dong, or make him cyborg smooth -- but you can't have both. Vision -- so much opportunity to have a Spock-like logical rational non-humanoid entity, so little exploration. Jarvis' humor was only good as a sidekick to Robert D Jr's over-the-top ness.
5 - Thor & hammer -- meh
6 - Captain America -- did he even get any opportunities in the film?
7 - Iron Man -- how could HE get upstaged?!??!

Final parting disappointments:
No after-credits scene (no schwarma w/new team??!), mid-credits scene wasn't really 'a scene'. Plot was a chaotic maelstrom. Wakanda / Vibranium piece was unnecessary. Endless Ultron drones = zero tension. Seemed like 5 long unnecessary fights, would have done better with a few meaningful encounters. Scrapping Pym was a mistake, he and Wasp are core to Avengers.
Nick Fury has what? I thought he was going underground somehow, not running around with a giant ... you-know-what.

Anyway, I probably could whine more, but I'm going to have to watch it a few more times to see if I missed some hidden gems and somehow wind up liking it more. For now, it was a C film -- damaged by too much money & talent, but desperately needing help with the writing / plot.

Cowardly raider who caused Noah's death & also mayor's son -- The reason Glenn didn't kill him is to inject *a ton* of tension into the show, AND he isn't given enough backbone (by writers) to axe deadweight, which keeps him in the "good guy" catagory.

- Walkers eating Mayor's kid - essential bc it allows civilized folks to be very suspicious of Rick's group & makes it more legit for them to turn on Rick's group. Also the Mayor can now be less rational.

- Wife beater surgeon Pete - flawed writing, a very 'on the nose' way of putting Rick into Shane's role but having him somehow 'heroic' -- even though he has a crush. Despite my total disagreement with Carol (when she said Rick had to kill Pete), at least she is consistent: 'Survival at all costs, and no middle ground.' Rick can't wear the badge anymore bc he is missing a few marbles since his wife croaked (but at least she doesnt visit the show anymore!).

- Carl & survivor girl -- if they can get in and out so easily, the town aint safe. If they cant get back in, they shouldve been discovered. (I'm *totally uninterested* in their coming romance!)

- Carol and kid -- while it comes off as humor, her threatening that kid was pretty dark stuff (esp when you consider her background). Now she is befriending him bc his Dad is a bad dad. Dunno.

- Daryl and amazingly bland (& gay) Aaron roaming the wild -- unless Aaron is around to get killed, I find him annoying. Darryl is a fav. Wish they didn't have to kill Merle, but he was a racist lowlife.

- Noah -- I was happy he went, not much in that character except a missing leg.

- Michonne KO's Rick -- I liked it, made sense. Rick waving his gun around, assaulting the doc, and his rant was all like a crazy man. Remember, Rick hit Carl in the fight too, making him no better than Doc Pete in a way.

- Missed Maggie, but barely noticed. Missed mullet nerd Eugene and red-head army musclehead Abraham, and was ok with it bc they are so 2 dimensional. Missed bad Priest, wish he would go bye bye -- priests in zombie flick$ = fodder.

- Lastly, Sasha shooting zombies. Its annoying. She's annoying. Wish they gave her more to work with for backstory! Can we have some multiracial love on the show besides Glenn and Maggie?

2016 update
"I'm just playing for my friend, Mama" - I need some 1-on-1 Mama time
"Mama said..." (could be Daddy instead) - how he asks for stuff when other parent says 'No'
"I hurt my new bone" - often if he gets hurt, but he says "new" for many adjectives
"My foot is growing bigger" - daily commentary
"I'm a big boy" - he says it, we use it to get him to stop doing baby stuff. Really helpful for potty training!
"A long day ago" - time expression for anytime before today.
"You are my bestest Daddy" (or Mama).
"Ryder is my bestest friend in the whole weld" - not sure when he'll say 'world' correctly, but weld is super cute.
"Selt" - salt
"I had a really weird dream. It was a Star Wars dream." - said more than a hundred times, not sure he's really EVER had a Star Wars dream, but who knows?
"Ess ess ohh" - he says this all the time, no idea what it'd about.
Noonels - noodles

2017 update
Lenny continues to create great words, and also more expressions / phrases:
"You are the bestest cooker, Mama"
"I was just playing no is yes and yes is no" -- this causes troubles.
"I was just kidding."
"Knock knock" (who's there?) "Interrupting claw who" -- he def has the knock knock concept down, but needs some work on the phrasing. I made the mistake of doing 'interrupting cow' too soon. Ha
"I know this in my skull and head" -- he knows where he knows stuff.
Matend, matending = pretend.

I installed Hearthstone on my Note 3 -- bypassing thr 'tablet only' restriction -- by grabbing the app from here: Android.WonderHowTo.com(I can't guarantee that this app is virus free, but it works fine for me so far.)

I'd been eagerly anticipating this CCG since I'd heard the hype & excitement, but I was surprised that the game is better than I hoped.

I quite like these games (esp last 2), but Hearthstone is special. I've been wanting a digital CCG that played like an f2f card game for a long time (still eagerly waiting a playable / fun M:TG or other more obscure CCG), and here it is.

(*R)Evolution is NOW

A 'Death Kulture' is not the only way humanity must exist on Earth! When people say they are 'conservative', ask them what from their Western History are they trying to conserve? Do they know their history, the real history of the USA?
(A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, is an incredible history book which tends to open the average US Citizen's eyes.)

Don't let anyone steal YOUR VISION of humanity's evolutionary destiny: as caretakers and guardians of Earth/ Eden, creators of a positive reality, or whatever you choose. Our visions are materialized by our lives!

Fellow humanity, we can choose our own path -- without the corrupt rulership of the past influencing or dominating! Regardless of what you may have heard, humanity is constantly improving itself. We can shake off our past shackles of exploitation and move into our true power!

The (*R)evolution (radical evolution) against oppression may not be televised, but it's being streamed into your mind -- starting NOW!